The Witness on the Roof (8 page)

There had not been time while they were away for the completion of all the improvements at the Towers that Warchester had contemplated. Many of them were scarcely begun. All Joan's rooms, however, were in perfect order; on that point his instructions had been explicit and an army of workmen had been employed.

The morning-room particularly had been his especial care, and he had felt amply repaid when he heard Joan's exclamation of delight.

The walls were painted in the faintest shade of dull grey, with exquisite water-colours let in as panels; the carpet was of the same shade of grey pile, with a tiny pattern of rosebuds forming a border; the furniture was upholstered in white plush; the writing-table of ormolu had once occupied a recess in the Trianon. The book-case at Joan's elbow held most of the world's classics in éditions de luxe; the great chesterfield near the fireplace was piled with white velvet cushions, painted with palest mauve or glittering with costly Eastern embroidery; and everywhere, on the escritoire, on the Chippendale tables, on the Brackets before the Sèvres mirror, there stood great silver bowls of roses—pink, fragrant La France, big glowing damask Prince of Asturias, tawny, copper-coloured William Allen Richardson.

If Joan, in her heart of hearts, was a little afraid of her beautiful room, and secretly preferred a cosy little den at the end of the corridor where her bedroom lay, she allowed no hint of it to appear.

She rose as her husband spoke.

“Of course I will come! The Dutch garden is going to be a success, Paul.”

“I think it is,” he acquiesced. “It is just the touch of colour that one needs coming on to the terrace from the gloom of the pinetum, and those stiffly-shaped beds filled with brilliant-hued flowers will look from above like jewels glowing in the grass beneath. It was a capital idea of yours.”

“Of mine!” Joan laughed as she stepped out on to the terrace and put her arm within his. “Mine was the merest suggestion; it is you who have carried out everything.”

They walked across the lawn together. The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, and the last rays fell upon Joan, touching her hair with gold.

The terrace lay on the other side of the lawn on the western front of the house. The grass at the Towers was the especial pride of MacDonald the old gardener's heart; soft with the growth of centuries, it was kept as smooth as a carpet. Great beeches shielded this lawn from sight of the avenue, and it was dotted about with big clumps of rhododendrons. From the terrace there was a view of the distant Derbyshire hills; flowering plants, fuchsia, honeysuckle, ampelopsis, sweet-scented hydrangea, climbed the grey old wall; and immediately beneath there lay a level stretch of grass that had been in olden times the bowling-green. It was here that Warchester was planning his Dutch garden. He and Joan lingered on the terrace, while he explained the whole scheme anew. There was to be a fountain in the centre; on either side the oblongs and triangles that were being cut were to be filled with the most gorgeously-coloured flowers—brilliant-hued geraniums, begonias, lobelias, petunias and calceolarias; lower down, beyond the ha-ha which formed the boundary opposite, he was thinking of making a rosery.

Joan listened and approved. It was very sweet to the girl who had been slighted all her life to be first now with one person, to find her every whim gratified, her slightest wish law. Sometimes she would rub her eyes, would tell herself that it must be a dream that she was Lady Warchester, that presently she would awaken to find herself little unconsidered Joan Davenant once more. Her engagement had been so short, Warchester had so hurried the marriage, that it seemed almost impossible that it could be an accomplished reality.

The honeymoon had been comparatively brief. It had been spent on board Warchester's yacht, wandering from port to port, just as fancy led them. Joan had bought all sorts of beautiful things, it seemed to her that she had spent a fortune, while Warchester had only laughed and encouraged her.

It was Joan's first experience of being spoilt, and she found the process very pleasant; nor was her homecoming a disillusionment. The neighbourhood received her with open arms—for was she not young and beautiful, the wife of the principal landowner in the county, and the heiress of the Davenants to boot? It was the general belief that Evelyn would not be found, and that the Davenant possessions would pass to Lady Warchester,

It was a marvellous change for Joan, from being Mrs. Davenant's unloved granddaughter. Unlimited money to spend, a worshipping husband, crowds of admiring friends—no wonder the girl stood in some danger of having her head turned! Warchester was drawing her to the steps that led from the terrace to the garden below when a man came across the lawn towards him.

“Mr. Knight is in the library, my lord.”

“Knight!” Warchester frowned. Knight was his farm steward; his business was wont to be of a lengthy nature. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“I understood him to say that he came by your lordship's appointment.” The man hesitated.

“My appointment?” Warchester said; then his face cleared. “Of course; I was forgetting. Say I will be with him in a minute, James. I must just speak to Knight, Joan,” as the footman departed. “It is about some improvements Warren wants. I will get rid of him as soon as I can. Will you come with me?”

“I don't know a bit about farm improvements, and it is lovely out here. I will wait until you come back. Be as quick as you can, Paul.”

“I won't be away from you an unnecessary moment,” he promised her.

Left alone, Joan watched, his tall, well-knit figure back to the house, then turned to look at the men at work in the garden below. Truly her lines had fallen in pleasant places, she reflected as she idly plucked a Gloire de Dijon that was nodding at her over the wall, and inhaled its fragrance. Who, knowing her history, would have prophesied that such happiness would fall to her share? Then, as a natural sequence, her thoughts turned to Evelyn, the other child of her mother's disastrous marriage. Her life had been very different, yet for her too there would be a good time now, if she lived to enjoy it.

Joan asked herself afresh what could have become of Evie. There seemed to her something unaccountable in her long silence, in the fact that so far the detectives had utterly failed to trace her. It had been assumed by Messrs. Hewlett and Cowham that Evie had grudged her sister's good fortune, the home that had been offered to her at Davenant Hall but, looking back at the love and care Evie had bestowed upon her, Joan found it difficult to give credence to this hypothesis. 

It was quite feasible that Evie had married and gone abroad, where none of Mr. Hurst's advertisements had reached her, that her letters, falling into Mr. Spencer's hands, had been lost. It might even be that she was dead, but Joan found it impossible to believe that she could be jealous of or spiteful towards her little sister. That would not be like Evie.

Joan shrank from the thought of her sister's death. She looked round. Warchester had been away longer than she thought. The gardeners were leaving off work; the horizon was overclouded. She felt suddenly cold in her thin dress.

As she stepped on the broad gravel walk that wound round the house she saw Mr. Knight walking down the avenue. Paul had forgotten his promise to come back to her as soon as possible, she said to herself. She would go and remind him of his broken word and administer a scolding.

The small library, so called, in which Warchester transacted most of his business, opened level with the morning-room, having only the library proper between.

Joan ran lightly along. The windows stood open, and as she came up she saw that, as she had surmised, Warchester was alone. His back was towards her; he was bending over his writing-table, tearing up some papers. As she stood on the threshold he turned, threw the torn papers into the empty fireplace, and then, catching up something from the mantelpiece, tore that up too, and tossed it after the others. Then he stepped quickly back to his table and took up his blotting-book.

Joan watched him, struck anew with the sense of familiarity that had haunted her when they first met. At length he threw the book on the table, and, straightening himself and partly turning so that he stood with his side face towards her, he took up one of her photographs that, framed in silver, stood on the little shelf of the escritoire. The light caught the great ruby in his ring. Then, as she waited, memory rushed over Joan like an overwhelming flood. A curious, bewildering sense of having watched like this before gave way to a fearful certainty the nightmare that had haunted her childhood took shape before her.

She saw herself, a lonely, terrified child, peeping in at a window, held to the spot by fright, watching a man in a grey suit like Paul's, with a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, tearing up photographs, throwing them into the fire, bending over a lifeless form on the rug. She heard herself again give that sob of horror —met for an instant those eyes.

Were they Paul's eyes? Was that why she had always felt that somehow—somewhere she and Paul had looked at one another before?

The horror of the thought drove the colour from her cheeks, threatened to stop the beating of her heart. Her knees felt weak; she swayed uncertainly. It seemed to be growing dark around her. She put up her hands and clutched at the lace at her throat.

Warchester turned to the window.

“Why, Joan, my darling!” he cried in joyful surprise. “Come in! Were you tired of waiting? Knight kept me longer than I expected, and he brought me bad news. Baron has given notice, and he is the oldest tenant on the estate. I was annoyed. Forgive me.”

Joan stared at him miserably, her lips parted dumbly. They were the same eyes that had gazed at her across the dead girl—over the window-sill, she told herself—that were looking at her now with love and longing. A low sob came from her lips. She had the old wild instinct of flight to get away anywhere, anyhow from this horror that was possessing her. But the darkness seemed to swallow her up; her feet, numbed by fear, refused to do her bidding.

“Joan, my dear,” said Warchester, coming towards her, “what is the matter? You are ill—faint!”

The horror in the girl's eyes deepened as he tried to take her in his arms.

She backed on to the grass behind, putting out her hands, as if to keep him off. But a thick darkness was rising and overwhelming her, blotting out Warchester's face; there was a strange, unaccustomed ringing in her ears; she felt as if a grey mist was closing about her and stifling her; she was conscious only of slipping down, down into dark, formless space.

“W
OULD
it be possible for me to see some back numbers of the
Daily Reporter
?” Joan inquired timidly.

“Fill up this form, and the attendant will bring them to you. Will you take a seat over there?”

Joan looked round nervously as she took a seat at one of the slanting tables and waited. It seemed to her that she was doing a very extraordinary thing, but the matter-of-fact manner of the clerk at the desk reassured her. He, at any rate, saw nothing uncommon in her wish to read a file of old newspapers.

The attendant brought a pile of papers and laid them before her.

Joan looked at them absently for a moment. This visit to the British Museum was the outcome of a miserably sleepless night.

Throughout its long hours she had lain tossing restlessly racked by an agony of doubt. She had lived over again that terrible indelible experience of her childhood; again and again she had told herself that it was impossible that there could be any real resemblance between Warchester, the husband she loved with every fibre of her being, and the stranger she had seen in that room looking on to the roofs.

And then the dreadful remembrance of that moment when their eyes had met would rush over her, and she would clench her hands together in an agony, remembering how from the first she had felt that vague sense of familiarity.

She sat up in bed, both hands pressed to her forehead, trying to remember the smallest detail, and in a moment a new idea flashed into her mind. If she had made no mistake, if what she had seen had really taken place, there must have been some account of it in the papers—it must have attracted attention. But ten years ago—it would not be easy to make inquiries now; and then she recalled some words of Warchester's with regard to some fact he had wished to ascertain—“I shall have to go to the Museum when I am in town and look up a file of the
Times
.”

Joan had asked questions, had heard that if one wanted to see back numbers of the papers one must go to the Museum.

It was quite simple really. She determined to go up to town and ascertain.

Rising early, she caught the first train, despite her maid's horrified remonstrances.

When Warchester came in to breakfast from his early morning walk round the home farm he would find her gone; she scarcely dared to think what he would say.

In the British Museum, however, the affair was more easily arranged than she had expected.

Her hand trembled as she turned over the papers. She knew the date of her coming to Davenant —the 12th of May; it was the day before she had climbed on the roofs, therefore the 12th would be the date of the paper she wanted.

She unfolded it slowly, “Murder in Grove Street.” She could scarcely believe her eyes were not playing her false now. As she bent over the paper her heart seemed to stop beating, then to go on in great suffocating throbs. Presently the mist before her eyes cleared, the letters ceased to dance up and down, and grouped themselves into words: